BOYS LACROSSE: Cohasset celebrates Div. 3 title

The Skippers, who had known championship-game heartbreak in multiple sports, finally broke through Saturday, beating Dover-Sherborn, 10-9, in the final at BU.

Dick TrustFor The Patriot Ledger

BOSTON – June 14, 2014 – a date that will live in glory at Cohasset High School.

The seniors graduated in the afternoon, picking up their diplomas after four memorable years of classroom study and joyous extracurricular activities.

Then the members of the boys lacrosse team – 11 freshly minted graduates among them – traveled to Boston University, picking up their Division 3 state championship trophy after one agonizing year of waiting for a second chance.

Redemption arrived in the form of a heart-pounding, 10-9 victory over two-time defending champion Dover-Sherborn. It was D-S that had defeated Cohasset, 12-10, in the 2013 state title game, setting off a chain of events that would include consecutive Skipper losses in three state championship finals: that ’13 lacrosse disappointment, a soccer setback and a Super Bowl football frustration.

All of that was wiped away in the final tick of a clock Saturday night.

With Dover-Sherborn (18-4) sniping away until the final second, Cohasset (20-4) held its ground and ended its year of agony.

“It was a crazy game ... it’s so surreal right now,” said senior goalie Jack Conte, who made just enough saves, then afterward said he was speechless.

The words spilled out anyway.

“(Cohasset) lost every final we were in, but this was it. This was the one to get. We got it,” Conte said. “We wanted this one. It was a lot of hard work. That was a hard game.”

Cohasset thought it had made it easy with a six-goal second quarter that turned a 3-2 first-quarter deficit into an 8-3 halftime command. All-American Colin Whelan fired in two second-period goals, while fellow senior midfielder and faceoff chief Will Golden and juniors Adam Benson, Cole Kissick and Jeff Powers scored single goals.

Sophomore Danny Axelson had given Cohasset a 1-0 lead just 3:22 into the first quarter. A good omen for Skipper fans, but, wait, there’s more to come.

No lead is safe against Dover-Sherborn. The Raiders were trying for a three-peat in state titles and were in their fourth straight championship final.

Nothing scares them, not even when in a five-goal hole with 24 minutes left.

As surely as both teams wore blue-and-white uniforms, D-S outscored Cohasset, 5-1, in the third quarter. Kissick’s third goal of the game was the lone Skipper scoring in that frame, setting up a hectic fourth quarter.

Golden’s unassisted goal with 9:54 to go gave Cohasset a 10-8 lead and proved to be the game-winner. Frantically trying to pull even or ahead, D-S scored with 1:33 remaining, junior Chris Williams netting his fourth goal of the night.

That was it. Conte and his supporting defenders shut the door – and opened the floodgates as Cohasset fans streamed onto the artificial turf and helped celebrate the Skippers’ first state lacrosse crown since 2010.

Conte dealt with the last-minute-of-the-game pressure head-on.

“I just said to myself, ‘You’ve got to buckle down. You’re not going to lose another state championship. It’s not happening,’” the goalie said. “I just buckled down, got my mind right and played my game. It was awesome.”

And so ended a year of dwelling on last year’s loss to Dover-Sherborn.

“We took on our team because of last year’s game,” said second-year Cohasset coach James Beaudoin. “The way we coached was because of last year’s game. When you get that close, two goals short, you say, ‘What did they do to us?’ You study the film and you try to get better and you try to react to what they’re going to do. It definitely was on the kids’ minds.

“Then we had a really good game against D-S in the regular season (Cohasset winning, 12-5), but (junior) Grant Gregory (three goals Saturday) and one of their top defensemen weren’t there. So we knew today would be different.”

Saturday was different in that the seniors fulfilled a double dream – they got their high school diplomas and won a state championship.

“This senior class was terrific,” Beaudoin said. “They earned it. They deserved it. They got so close so often. They knew this was their last shot. They graduated earlier in the day and they had two or three hours to get ready and hop on the bus.

“The seniors were thinking, ‘This is it for us. Our last high school obligation is to play in this game in a beautiful place like this against a phenomenally coached team with three All-Americas on it.’”

Golden couldn’t stop smiling during the post-game hoopla.

“We slipped up a little bit,” he said of the third-quarter D-S scoring outburst, “but we certainly managed to finish strong. That’s all that matters. We got the job done and brought home the hardware.”

Whelan, an All-America selection along with junior teammate Tim Gillis, said he had been counting the days until Saturday’s rematch with D-S.

“Off-season I was working in the gym, in-season shooting on turf, trying to get better,” Whelan said. “I knew we’d facing Dover-Sherborn again. They were a hell of a team.”